


Juno Steel and the Scourge of the Holiday Sale

by bluemoodblue



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Family Bonding, Found Family, Gen, Weird holiday traditions, and sometimes you make new ones, crazy capsaicin charlie, holiday fic, sometimes you miss old holiday traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:28:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29567511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemoodblue/pseuds/bluemoodblue
Summary: He can feel the eyes in the room on them both while he sets the plate and mug down on the table and Rita bounces in place. “And this is... more important than your birthday?” Nureyev ventures after a moment, and Juno struggles to find an explanation that will... well, explain any of it.“Charlie’s this really big chili pepper mascot thing,” he manages, and he knows he’s failed to explain anything by the slow rise of Nureyev’s brow.“And we gotta shoot him!” Rita’s screech is at least as urgent as if she were actively under attack.
Relationships: Aurinko Crime Family & Juno Steel, Rita & Juno Steel
Kudos: 9





	Juno Steel and the Scourge of the Holiday Sale

**Author's Note:**

> There are a few fics over on tumblr that I felt were good enough to post here - this is one of them!
> 
> Crazy Capsaicin Charlie and his lore is mostly a result of me musing about what a weird holiday this year was, and wondering what kind of tradition Juno might have, and deciding that his sharpshooting might come into play somewhere. That is the only explanation I have for... all of this.
> 
> (And I backdated it because it’s sure not the holidays anymore, apologies in advance if I’ve done it wrong! I’ve never tried backdating something before, fingers crossed that it works!)

“Mistah Steel, we’re gonna miss it!”

It’s eight o’clock in the morning, ship time. Juno has a mug of coffee in one hand, a plate of rehydrated waffles in the other, and no idea what Rita is talking about. He makes a valiant attempt anyway, even though his entire brain feels like that little loading circle that comes up when he asks for too much from his comms. “The, uh. The ‘Vampires are from Venus’ stream?”

It’s enough to derail her for a minute. “Awww, you remembered!” Only for a minute. “But no, that’s not what I’m talkin’ about and this is _way_ more important anyway. Don’t you remember what’s coming up, like real _real_ soon?”

Juno looks around for a calendar, but the only one in the kitchen is from Neptune two years ago. “It’s almost winter, Earth-time,” Buddy mentions from across the room.

“So... my birthday?”

“ _No_ , Mistah Steel, even more important than that!” Coming from anyone else that might sting a little, but it’s Rita. Juno has seen Rita’s party-planning attempts; the way they always seem to fall apart is never because she didn’t try hard enough. “The holiday sale, boss! They’re gonna be puttin’ up Crazy Capsaicin Charlie and we ain’t gonna _be there!_ ”

He can feel the eyes in the room on them both while he sets the plate and mug down on the table and Rita bounces in place. “And this is... more important than your birthday?” Nureyev ventures after a moment, and Juno struggles to find an explanation that will... well, explain any of it.

“Charlie’s this really big chili pepper mascot thing,” he manages, and he knows he’s failed to explain anything by the slow rise of Nureyev’s brow.

“ _And we gotta shoot him!_ ” Rita’s screech is at least as urgent as if she were actively under attack.

Juno freezes, chair halfway pulled out from the table. “Oh. Oh _crap_. Do you think maybe someone else will...?”

“Who’s got your aim? They got all kinds of security now, you know nobody can get close anymore.”

“I didn’t have my aim last year -”

“But you had _me_.” That’s true, he had Rita. Rita, who could get past security to put on a really spectacular show.

Nureyev, who has been doing his best to understand Juno since their reunion and mostly succeeding, tries again. “So the chili mascot is... dangerous?”

Juno opens his mouth and Rita cuts in before he can say anything. “Oh no, not at all - old Charlie’s creepy-looking as anything, gets worse every year, but he doesn’t move or nothin’ - just stands there and stares at you with those big, bulgy eyes. And we gotta _shoot him_.”

“...I see.”

Crazy Capsaicin Charlie started as a half-baked marketing gimmick when Juno was six. The owner of a local grocery store got really excited by the concept of an old commercial earth holiday and knew exactly three things about it: someone involved had a name that started with “ch”-something, the color red, and alluringly low prices. That was all they needed to create Charlie, a grinning, big-eyed terror that might generously be called a pepper parked on the roof through the winter to announce special holiday prices.

Juno and Benten hated him. It was an ire that was sparked the very first time they saw that massive face staring down at them, and that was only stoked when the “holiday savings” idea gained popularity with the rest of Hyperion and their joint birthday was forced to share space with something else. It didn’t help that the grocery store was two streets and a whole district away from Oldtown; the owner grew up just like the two of them, struggling and scrapping for a place in the poorest part of the city. Now that they’d had some success, they’d slammed the door shut on where they came from - the promotions and coupon books somehow circulated everywhere but Oldtown, obviously not the chosen clientele. Even shoplifting was harder to do there - Juno and Ben were chased out as often as they made a clean getaway.

Against their will, the stupid pepper had become another staple of their lives: Ben was going to grow up to be a dancer, Juno’s aim was the talk of schoolyard legend, and they hated Capsaicin Charlie like he’d personally wronged them.

The first time was a whim. Benten was in a bad mood - upset about a dance class, maybe, or moping about a bad grade; Juno couldn’t remember anymore. It was one of Ben’s rare low moments, and Juno probably would have done almost anything to get him smiling again. A laugh would help, he’d thought. Something stupid, he’d decided, and he dragged Ben out of the house to cause a little mischief.

It wasn’t until he caught sight of Charlie out of the corner of his eye, almost past the grocery store, that Juno finally decided what he was going to do. He parked the car in an empty lot across the street, grabbed the stun gun in the glovebox, and shot Crazy Capsaicin Charlie right between the eyes.

Benten stared at him, open-mouthed. And then he’d laughed, once, before the dam broke and he was giggling helplessly into Juno’s shoulder, egging him on to try more daring shots before they were caught.

They were about to leave when Juno handed the gun over to Ben. “Go on, take a shot.”

“I don’t have your aim.”

“No one has my aim. But he’s pretty big, I bet you can hit him.”

And Benten, always game for trouble, took the shot.

It had missed, of course - Juno could never give an explanation for why one twin got all the targeting talent and the other probably couldn’t get a paper ball into the basket standing over it - but it had been pretty close. Just a little to the left and he would have clipped one of those bulging eyes, but instead, he fired a solid blast into the sign behind him. That would have been fine, if the grocery store’s owner had followed code and installed their holiday advertising the way they were supposed to. They had not.

The entire display - Charlie, the flashing sign behind him, and most of the roof - was up in flames in seconds. Juno and Benten stared at the destruction in awe, and then at each other... and then they’d scrambled for the door handles and made a quick, breathless, laughing getaway.

There was a new Charlie, and a new flashing sign, and a new roof the next year. It was too tempting for them to leave well enough alone. And while they didn’t set the roof ablaze again, the repeat visit solidified the tradition - every year for the commercial holiday, Juno and Benten would shoot Crazy Capsaicin Charlie.

(When Ben was gone, Juno almost didn’t go. And then he’d thought about Charlie being around for another birthday when Benten _wasn’t_ , and that had decided him for _years_.)

It had been one of his only traditions. Mick was with him some years, Sasha came along once and they’d riddled the cheap statue with holes, Rita had to be talked into it the first time but she’d been laughing madly by the time they left. The year he didn’t get married, he’d gone alone. Last year, when he couldn’t make the shot if Charlie was running him down and his life depended on it, Rita snuck a bomb onto the roof (“Just a small one, Mistah Steel, it’ll hardly do anything I _swear_ ”) and the whole setup collapsed so quickly that Juno thought for a second the concentrated mushroom cloud had eaten it. Trust Rita to find a way to recapture that stunned, giddy feeling of the first night with Ben - if anyone could, it was her. The local papers called it “The War on Charlie” after the first few years and ever since.

And it wasn’t going to happen this year.

Juno can’t ask the crew to turn around and take him to Hyperion, not for a stupid holiday... thing. They’d never make it in time, and besides that - Juno doesn’t _want_ to go back. He misses it, and he doesn’t, and there are pieces he would have taken with him if they would have fit in a suitcase - this is one of them. Juno knew when he made his decision that he was leaving parts of his life behind. That’s a part of moving on. So he knew it was coming, but it’s different, to be confronted with something solid that he has to accept he doesn’t have anymore.

Juno chuckles. “I think we’re gonna miss it this year, Rita.”

He can tell she’s disappointed, but she didn’t really think he’d come up with a solution. “You got lucky this year, Charlie,” she mutters, and she pats his shoulder in a way that tells him without words she’s proud of him.

Juno expects it to hurt more. He waits for the sting of loss to hit, or even just contrary annoyance, but he’s distracted by Rita bringing up her comms and projecting Charlie’s awful face into the middle of the kitchen - making a very specific expression.

A familiar expression. “Rita, that’s not from -”

Charlie bobs his head and sings in an unexpectedly high-pitched, grating voice.

“- the jingle,” Juno finishes with a groan.

“Oh my,” Nureyev says, looking appropriately dismayed.

“Awful, ain’t it?” Rita sounds gleeful when she asks. “At least two months of this every year, and that’s something I’m not gonna miss.”

It’s enough to have him pushing his waffles away before Nureyev scoots closer and pushes them back, and then Rita flips over to old, digital issues of the paper - all of the exploits and intrigue the editor managed to cram into a mundane vandalism story on a slow newsday. Starting with her favorite: the year of the inflatable Charlie, that Mick punctured and sent flying somehow. There’d been rumors of nearby alien spacecraft for months after when the balloon raced across the Hyperion skyline. And it’s... nice. Different, but good, to share memories of a retired tradition.

It’s different, but good, when Jet hands him a pumpkin and Vespa hands him a knife and they both give him free reign to mutilate an innocent gourd, if that does anything for him. Good, when Buddy has some strangely specific targets for practice and Juno hits every one. Good, when Nureyev asks him questions about the weird customs he made up with Benten.

He thinks the best is probably when Rita comes running in before family stream night, though.

“Mistah Steel you’re never gonna believe it, it’s a holiday miracle!” The words start out faint and grow rapidly louder as Rita races from somewhere else in the ship to the rec room, her comms held out in front of her like something precious. She shoves the screen in his face from over the back of the couch, and Juno leans back a little to see better.

On the screen is a familiar sight - a fairly nice street and a large, fairly nice grocery store in Hyperion City. On the roof is a terrible pepper mascot, and he’d be grinning if there was that much left of his mouth. Charlie is riddled in holes, though, and barely standing. When Juno takes a closer look at the footage he notices that it’s a news broadcast - dated for that day, Mars-time. “What...?”

“They did it, boss!” Juno winces - that scream was directly in his ear - but when the words register he turns to look at Rita for confirmation. “I don’t know who, or how, or even why, but - someone did it! Someone shot Charlie for us!” She pumps her fists in the air and runs from the room, yelling for Jet.

“The tradition lives on, even as Charlie does not,” Nureyev chuckles, leaning back on Juno’s shoulder from where he’d been temporarily displaced, and Juno argues that Charlie is, unfortunately, eternal.

It’s just an old, silly idea to make someone laugh. It isn’t even _his_ anymore. But Juno admits, quietly and only to himself, that there’s something nice in knowing it isn’t over yet.

**Author's Note:**

> To everyone who missed out on traditions they were looking forward to this year - I hope you found something different, but good, to make it special for you!


End file.
